National and Transnational Dynamics of Women's Activism in Turkey In
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2016 National and Transnational Dynamics of Women’s Activism in Turkey in the 1950s and 1960s: The Story of the ICW Branch in Ankara Umut Azak and Henk de Smaele This article attempts to analyze the transnational dimension of a forgot- ten period of women’s activism in the 1950s. In the historiography of the Turkish women’s movement, these years have been depicted as an HUDRIVWDWHIHPLQLVPZKLFKUHSODFHGWKHÀUVWZDYHIHPLQLVWPRYHPHQW represented by the Union of Turkish Women in the mid-1930s and would later be challenged by the second-wave feminism that emerged as a radical and independent movement in the 1980s. It was during the 1950s, however, that a transnational women’s network was revived since the convening of the Twelfth Congress of the International Alli- ance of Women in Istanbul in 1935. This article unearths the story of the establishment of the Turkish branch of the International Council of Women in the late 1950s and contextualizes this transnational encounter of activist women in a local and international setting, which was both heavily imbued with nationalist and Eurocentric concepts. eminist scholars have recently argued that the international spread of FWestern-style feminism has been complicit in establishing and perpetu- ating Western global dominance, and there is now a rich body of literature on feminist Orientalism, racism, and imperialism. 1 In their critical analyses of the working of power in modern societies, radical historians have simi- larly demonstrated how European “progressive” movements were implied in (neo)colonial and (neo)imperialist projects. 2 This article builds on that scholarship, focusing on a much neglected topic and period in women’s history: the transnational and national dynamics of women’s activism in Turkey in the 1950s. We uncover the history of the postwar relationships between the (mainly European and North American) leaders of the Interna- tional Council of Women (ICW) and their potential Turkish allies, leading up to the creation of a Turkish branch of the ICW in 1960. We will show how this history was shaped by “feminist Orientalism,” a discourse that relates oppression of women and gender inequality to the (often Islamic) backwardness of the “Oriental world,” and argues the ideals of liberty and equality are supposedly inherent in the modern, Western project of Enlight- enment. As the literary critic Joyce Zonana has argued, feminist oriental- © 2016 Journal of Women’s History, Vol. 28 No. 3, 41–65. 42 Journal of Women ’s History Fall ism is “a rhetorical strategy (and a form of thought) by which a speaker or writer neutralizes the threat inherent in feminist demands and makes them SDODWDEOHWRDQDXGLHQFHWKDWZLVKHVWRDIÀUPLWVRFFLGHQWDOVXSHULRULW\µ 3 It can also create alliances between white women activists and white men, who feel encouraged to “save brown women from brown men.” 4 Since the 1980s, a new generation of Turkish feminists has critically analyzed the way in which women’s rights were “appropriated” by Ke- malist elites ever since the founding of the republic. Their desire to break away from this “state feminism,” which prioritized the state’s role in the empowerment of women, was an important starting point for a new, more radical and independent feminist movement that marked the second wave of feminism in Turkey. 5 Feminist activists and scholars who took part in this wave were the ones who discovered that they were the granddaughters of late Ottoman and early republican feminists. They produced several VFKRODUO\ZRUNVXQYHLOLQJWKHKLVWRU\RIWKHÀUVWZDYHRI2WWRPDQ7XUN - LVKIHPLQLVPXQWLOLWVÀQDODSSURSULDWLRQE\WKH.HPDOLVWUHJLPHLQ 6 6FKRODUVIUDPHGWKHGHFDGHVRIWKHVWRWKHVEHWZHHQWKHÀUVWDQG second waves as a long period of passive state feminism. 7 Only recently have some studies shed light on women’s activism in civil society and within the socialist movement in this period. 8 This article aims to contribute to this literature, analyzing and contextualizing the transnational dimension of this “dead” period. As the historian Celia Donert has remarked, “this period, often characterized in feminist historiography as an era of female political DSDWK\¶EHWZHHQWKHZDYHV·RIÀUVWDQGVHFRQGJHQHUDWLRQIHPLQLVPZDV actually rich in transnational exchanges between women activists who made crucial contributions to the form and content of international women’s rights during the UN Decade for Women launched in 1975.” 9 The focus on transnational activism and personal encounters between activists may have other advantages as well. In its winter 2013 issue, the Journal of Women’s History published a conversation about the intersection of radical and women’s history. In this roundtable, editor Jean Quataert states, “The new turn to the global with its embrace of contingency, polycentric developments, and overlapping levels of agency is a real departure from earlier limitations.” 10 In our story, there are many actors, but nobody seems to be completely in control of the action. There is no center but rather many centers of many different yet partly overlapping worlds and developments. This approach not only makes “agency” tangible (and therefore less of an abstract category), it also helps to avoid the trap of reducing the “West” (or the “East”) to a monolithic bloc. This article reveals that in the context where women’s rights became an international issue, the contacts between the ICW and Turkish women activists were mediated and largely determined by diplomatic networks. 2016 Umut Azak and Henk de Smaele 43 These transnational encounters in turn reproduced rather than undermined Eurocentric and nationalist frameworks in which actors on both sides oper- ated. Representing the “East” was the priority for both women at ICW head- quarters and Turkish women activists. While the ICW wanted to include Turkey as a symbol of their organization’s will to extend its international network beyond the “West” and towards the Islamic and Asiatic countries, Turkish women (and men) wanted to represent Turkey as a modern nation superior to the “East.” Orientalist categories were thus incorporated into the transnational relationships of the 1950s. At the same time, transnational feminism helped cement the Orientalist foundations of the Turkish republic. International Feminist Movements in the Ottoman/Turkish Context Ottoman and Turkish women were involved in international feminist organizations almost from the beginning of their associational activities in the nineteenth century. 11 One of the oldest of these organizations was the International Council of Women (FCW), founded in 1888. 12 ,QWKHÀUVW decades of the twentieth century, some Ottoman women attended its confer- ences, but these participants were often linked to the Ottoman opposition LQH[LOHPHDQLQJWKH\GLGQRWVHUYHDVRIÀFLDOGHOHJDWHVRIWKH7XUNLVK National Council of Women. 13 Hayriye Ben-Ayad, an Ottoman-Muslim woman, however, appears on the roster of participants at the international women’s congress of the ICW in Berlin in 1904. 14 ,QDGGLWLRQ6HOPD5×]D the sister of the leader of the Young Turk opposition in Paris, was in contact with French women’s associations during her exile and served as honorary vice-president for the Ottoman Empire, where a council of women was not yet formed, of the ICW between 1909 and 1923. She wrote a report on Turkey in the annual protocol of the ICW in 1909 and 1910 and expressed her willingness to open a branch of the ICW in Turkey. 15 With the founding of the republic, the new authorities stressed the close ties between “modernization” and the emancipation of women, but they—the Kemalist elite—developed an ambiguous attitude towards the ZRPHQ·VPRYHPHQW7KHIHPLQLVWVFKRODU<DSUDN=LKQLRùOXGRFXPHQWV how the government thwarted the initiative of the feminist activist Nezihe Muhittin to found a women’s party in 1923. The leaders of the republic allowed social activism only insofar as it could be controlled by the gov- ernment. By 1926, Muhittin’s 7UN.DG×QODU%LUOLùL (TKB, Union of Turkish Women) formally joined the International Woman Suffrage Alliance (IWSA, later known as the International Alliance of Women [IAW]), a more politi- cal suffragist organization—compared to the ICW—that had been founded in Berlin in 1904. TKB’s contacts with the international women’s move- ment found expression in its magazine .DG×Q<ROX (The Path of Woman), 44 Journal of Women ’s History Fall published between 1925 and 1927, which had a special page devoted to international news and thus represented Turkey’s “progressive” reputation in the international arena. From 1927 on, the TKB participated in the IAW commission “Peace and the League of Nations,” long before the inclusion of Turkey in the league itself in 1932. 16 In 1935, the IAW held its congress in Istanbul. According to the anthropologist Kathryn Libal, “Atatürk and other leaders portrayed the Istanbul Congress as a sign of the world’s endorse- ment of Turkey’s recent legal reforms concerning women’s status.” 17 The LQWHUQDWLRQDOFRQIHUHQFHÀ[HGWKHH\HRIWKHZRUOGRQ7XUNH\ZKLFKKDG introduced female suffrage in 1934, while countries like France and Belgium still restricted political rights to men only. 18 After the conference, however, authorities dismantled the TKB. The feminist historian Nicole A.N.M. van Os states rather categorically that “this Congress was to mark the end of the ÀUVWZDYHRIIHPLQLVPLQ7XUNH\µ 19 7KHRIÀFLDOGLVFRXUVHKHOGWKDW$WDWUN had liberated Turkish women, achieving female emancipation and making feminist organizations obsolete. ,Q0HYKLEHúQ|QWKHZLIHRIWKHSUHVLGHQWRIWKHUHSXEOLFDQG some women